We and our trusted partners use technology such as cookies on our site to personalize content and ads, provide social media features, and analyze our traffic. You can read more about it and change your preferences here.

A Little Family And Their Simple Yet Great Happiness

Setting foot in Hue at the end of May, I went across Cau Hai lagoon with a view of smoke on the harvested fields next to a small river in the afternoon. It is a very picturesque context in Hue village. There are rivers, lakes, bamboo bush, fields and houses that appear and disappear alternately behind the row of green trees covering the shade. I decided to stop and then I and an Icelandic photographer who is my partner in the journey of Vietnam-Phototours approached this location together.

We walked into and waded across of field bank with mud remained.. and met farmers who were cultivating on the small land. From far distance, it is an image of a man grazing buffaloes which ate the remaining straws on the fields.

I met a woman who was busy with planting a little of vegetables on such small lands and asked about the man grazing buffaloes at the river bank..

And then I knew he is the husband of that woman and get mentally ill more than 40 years. A daily difficult life of this couple is planting vegetables and grazing buffaloes for others to pay off daily living.

As the woman talked: Sometimes when he got sick and was out of control himself, he crashed, screamed, writhed with his pain, hit his wife and affected to village order.. .and neighbors sometimes reacted and hit him. When his illness was serious, the neighbors and relatives must tie his hand and foot to take him to hospital. After a short term, his health and metal gradually got stable, he was allowed to back home to help his wife do housework and graze buffaloes for others like nothing happened before…. That couple has been living like that more than 40 years in a tear house in the village and together working to live day by day..

On that afternoon, we take a bunch of beautiful photo with context, nature color and human. Throughout journey on car, I always thought about them. It is a little house with a great happiness inside when they went through 40 years with difficulties to keep their happiness until now.

It is interesting that sometimes when somebody is violent or in trouble all the time, people will say that it is understandable because he was poor or had a "hard life." Being abused, unloved, or neglected might make a person hard, but simple poverty and hard work doesn't seem to.

It is interesting that sometimes when somebody is violent or in trouble all the time, people will say that it is understandable because he was poor or had a "hard life." Being abused, unloved, or neglected might make a person hard, but simple poverty and hard work doesn't seem to.